IPowerWeb.com: The Nuclear Option
By Jonathan Bailey • Dec 7th, 2005 • Category: Articles, Citizens, DMCA, Legal Issues, Personal ExperiencesAs I reported recently, a site called 57storylane.com (link down) was hosting two of my poems underneath a different name. I tried to contact the owner of the site directly twice with no luck and opted instead to contact their host, iPowerWeb.
iPowerWeb is a Santa Monica, California- based full-service Web host with over 350,000 customers. They provide hosting, domain registration and marketing among other services.
Like most large Web hosts, such as ThePlanet, they have very strict requirements on how notices of copyright infringement are sent and they follow the DMCA to the letter of the law, perhaps more so than even Google. However, unlike most large hosts, their response time was quick and their communication was good. Though I was confused by some of their requirements, I was overall very pleased with how well they worked with me.
However, my concern with them has less to do with the speed of their response, but rather, the form that it came in. It seems that, for these guys, the only option is the nuclear one.
After sending in my DMCA notice to the address listed as the designated agent, I immediately received an automated reply with links to the information required in such a notice as well as other, more general, abuse information. A few hours later, I got a quick email from their general counsel saying that the matter was being looked into and would be handled in accordance with the DMCA. Within a day, the infringing works were down.
Unfortunately, so was the entire site.
Apparently, iPowerWeb can not disable access to infringing works without simply suspending the entire account. In the case of 57storylane.com, this meant that an entire site, complete with hundreds of pages of content from dozens of authors, was disabled due to one infringing author with two infringing works.
Granted, this site had a higher degree of responsibility since it accepted “submissions” from authors, reviewed them and posted them. This site was not simply a middle man like allpoetry.com or similar sites. Still most hosts are capable of disabling access to infringing works without terminating the entire site.
As someone who’s already uneasy enough about using DMCA notices, this kind of incident is pretty scary. Even though I know I’m not at fault for this (and the fact that the owners of the site have made no effort to restore access after 72 hours further proves that the owners are being negligent in their maintenance) but I still feel as if I should apologize to the other authors that might have been injured, even in a minor way.
I’m sorry that you had your works removed, but you need to seriously look into finding a better home for your material. There are plenty of places out there and there was just no reason to go with 57storylane anyway.
Regardless though, I view iPowerWeb as a solid citizen in the plagiarism war. They’re doing what’s required of them and taking the issue seriously.
Still, this raised a very interesting question regarding the effect of DMCA notices. For large hosts, is the nuclear option the only one? Not being very familiar with the network set up of such hosts, I’m seeking input in the matter. Is this something iPowerWeb is alone in or do other services have a similar problem.
Simply put, most of the domains I’ve dealt with, as few of them as there have been have been near-total losses with almost all of the content infringing. This is the first time I’ve seen a large volume of (apparently) legitimate content get removed with the infringing.
I’m seeking any input on this that is available.
[tags]Plagiarism, DMCA, Hosting, iPowerWeb, Content Theft, Copyright Law, Copyright[/tags]
Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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My two cents -
Nuclear option is the easiest route.
Most big web service providers use dedicated or semi-dedicated hosting, which leaves little under the control of hosting provider. I don’t see a simple logical way to block certain pages of contents in such cases.
For shared hosting they can block the offending pages in Apache. However that puts a load on other accounts sharing the server which is unfair to them.
[...] Many major “dot com” Web hosts handle DMCA notices through a method I’ve previously referred to as the Nuclear Option. Even if the infringement is just on one or two pages within a site, they will pull the entire domain offline until the issue is resolved. [...]
[...] Buying Time: Since the host contacted the site operator, something my attempts to do had failed in achieving, and the work was removed before I could file a new notice, it seems likely that the host was just buying some time to avoid having to use the nuclear option (Note: The host was NOT ipowerweb.com) on a decent-sized site. [...]
It might be the easiest route but as being on the receiving end it’s awful. iPowerWeb received a DMCA notice from someone about something related to my website. After months of requesting the complaint it was promised to me via fax.
Fast forward 1.5 years and a growing LA BBB complaint about them - my files are still being held hostage. I was not given an opportunity to see the complaint nor delete the alleged material.
After a lot of research of my database backups, I can only guess that the problem was two sentences pulled from another website. I used quotation marks and a citations with a link to the originating website.
My son’s baby pictures were backed up to their server. And now I have no way of getting them back, assuming they haven’t already been deleted. My emails are left unreplied and I don’t feel as if I have any recourse left.
[...] no page to take down, the host is in a difficult situation. Though they can disable the whole domain, there is no easy way for them to remove just the infringing work. Worse yet, there is no way to [...]
[...] differently to DMCA notices and other copyright complaints. Some take down the entire domain, such as iPowerWeb, and others will either surgially remove the content or ask the Webmaster to do it for them. For [...]
[...] is a pretty basic idea and it is one I started working on shortly after my first encounter with iPowerWeb but only started actively using in recent months as I’ve escalated the amount of images on [...]
[...] it Came From: My interactions with other hosts and how they often handle copyright [...]